According to a source inside The Block, Microsoft former global head of Web3 business development and AI, Vassilis Tziokas, has joined the Matter Labs team to strengthen the zkSync Era ecosystem.
Tziokas, who has experience of his own at Microsoft, says he wants to unlock the “holy grail” of Web3 with the help of Ethereum’s scalability solution.
zkSync has opened its doors to the veteran tech giant, and is ready to move on to the next step in its roadmap, which is to decentralize its sequencers as much as possible.
In the meantime, the rollup is recording excellent numbers in the blockchain world, confirming it as one of the most dominant infrastructures in the Ethereum layer-2 context.
See all the details below.
Microsoft joins Matter Labs team to help grow zkSync
According to a report by The Block, a former Microsoft veteran has embraced the principles and philosophy of zk solution developer Matter Labs to join the development of the zkSync Era infrastructure.
He is Vassilis Tziokas, former global leader for web3 and AI business development and strategy at Microsoft, who will now become head of enterprise business development for the cryptographic label.
Tziokas, who spent eight years in house at the U.S. tech giant, revealed that he became particularly interested in zkSync after reading the “ZkSync Credo” manifesto that presented in June this year on Github the values and goals that layer-2 intended to pursue in the coming years.
Now, after joining Matter Labs, he intends to unlock the “holy grail” of web3 by drawing the attention of companies to the blockchain space.
In an interview with The Block, he revealed that companies are always looking for new frameworks to create value, but are partly blocked because they are forced to “operate in a clear regulatory environment.”
Tziokas thinks that ZSync represents the right protocol that allows companies to take advantage of this revolution in the digital sphere while maintaining control of their data and experiences in the Web3 space.
As soon as the regulatory uncertainty factor is resolved, the Ethereum rollup could experience a very strong institutional and private interest on its skin, with numerous entities ready to develop their business ideas on the decentralized ZK infrastructure
Continuing the interviewee stated that:
With as much as $430 million in TVL, a TP/s number ranging between 10.5 and 12 and an increasingly present application ecosystem in the DeFi world, zkSync stands as the top “Zero Knowledge rollup” in the web3 world, behind only the “optimistic rollups” of Arbitrum, Optimism and Base.
Despite all the medals won and merits celebrated, there are also highlighting flaws to improve and some challenges that Matter Labs and its creation must address between now and the next few years.
As the former global leader for web3 and AI business development and strategy at Microsoft mentioned, zkSync’s biggest problem concerns the centralization of its sequencers and provers, which are currently controlled by the project team.
This creates single points of failure and potential censorship risks that, if enacted, could ruin the reputation of layer-2.
This Imperfection is known to infrastructure insiders and its resolution is among the list of goals to be achieved in the short term.
Tziokas in this regard stated that:
“Decentralizing the protocol is a must. Otherwise, how is it different from centralized cloud or container infrastructure?
Decentralizing access for everyone will be a long journey but we are on the right track.”
According to Matter Labs, the decentralization of its sequencers and provers will be completed within a few months along with the addition of an additional team of third-party developers who will help keep the zkSync protocol and ZK Stack up to date.
Other hurdles to be overcome include a dearth of clear regulations in the web3 world that still creates hesitancy on the part of companies and individuals to invest in the field, as mentioned earlier.
In addition, there are limitations regarding the fragmentation of vendors and the complex UX that rollup developers are facing